


Karkat Vantas Is Swaggerific

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: And Learning to Kill Things, Friendship, Karkat's Slow and Unrelenting Descent into Insanity, Meteorstuck, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pop music, Terrible Bets, Which Makes This Almost Canon, hinted pairings, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-29
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-17 12:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1386940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The moral of this story is that no one beats Dave Strider at slam poetry, and now Karkat has to control his rage long enough to hold up his end of this deal.<br/>He has to dance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Karkat Vantas Is Swaggerific

“Oh yeah, sweet thang,” Dave called. “You’re killing it.” The timetables under his hands whirled. Lesson #1,698 of the Great Boredom Gurus of This Fucking Rock: you will in time learn to play back all the sounds that have happened in this room across a timeline, mix them up into sick beats, and it will be friggin boss as hell. Lesson #1 is that yes, you’re bound to explore these abilities when you’ve been banished to a magic space rock for three years of sitting on your hands.  
  
Across the room, on the metal bench the trolls used to prop up their husktops, Terezi swung her legs and grinned widely.  
  
The person Dave was _actually_ addressing with his hyperironic bullshit immediately dropped his arms and offered Strider the most flesh-peeling glare in his arsenal. “Oh excuse me, Knight of Dipshit,” Karkat said, hunching steadily inward. “Grace my ears with your notoriously fallacious wisdom, I’m dying for some more.”  
  
Dave shook his head slowly, mournfully. “Karkat, bro. It might already be too late for me to ask this, but… Have you even _heard_ of rhythm?”  
  
Most likely, Dave had heard of the proffered middle finger he was now observing from eyesockets that Karkat was seriously going to _beat Gamzee’s tick-infested bulge through_ if he didn’t quit stopping Karkat from finishing out his end of this fucking bet.  
  
Granted: Karkat had actually thought that he could win the breakfast table’s impromptu slam-off. He deserved some measure of penance.  
  
That was not under dispute here.  
  
The dispute was that Dave had told Karkat losing meant he’d have to dance his way through three pop songs; either the ones ironically given harbor on his laptop, or the ones Dave came up with on his own. And just… come _on_. Karkat, dancing? Yeah right. His baggy old man sweater (Terezi’s words, not his; Karkat loved this sweater like a son) or his obviously nimble-as-a-pirouette-off-a-daisy-fart hunched-shoulder slouchskulk—which of those screamed ‘I want to flail my desperate rage sweat to terrible beats and incomprehensible lyrics’ louder?  
  
And Dave actually was holding Karkat to his end of the deal too, the fucker.  
  
“Try it again,” Dave said, directing his shades back at his computer screen. “But this time, with less trying to fold yourself through the floor.”  
  
“No. Fuck you.”  
  
“Ah, ah, ah,” Terezi chirped from behind him. Karkat clenched his teeth and lifted his eyes skyward. He adored this girl. Really and truly adored her since the first time he saw her typing quirks and deemed her a hate-worthy asshat. And right now, he wanted to throw her off the end of their magical space rock. “You made a bargain, Karkat. A contract, as it were. The court simply cannot allow such a flagrant disregard of the judicial process.”  
  
Karkat counted slowly to ten and back again. Breathed. Kanaya had promised him that this would help.  
  
“You must dance,” Terezi decreed. “We gathered present demand it to settle your debts, and appease our amusement.”  
  
Karkat menaced the Strider with his gaze. If he crossed his arms any harder, Karkat was going to cause himself spine damage. “I refuse to listen to the song by the… the one called ‘Gaga’ one more time. I would rather hack out my entire cochlear apparatus than repeat this horrific experience.”  
  
“’The One Called Gaga’,” Dave repeated, snickering. Karkat’s eyes narrowed.  
  
“I didn’t say it like that.”  
  
“Dude, you totally did. The One Called Gaga. Hallowed, she walks through the sacred halls of our iconic pop kingdom, given only thirty vassals to do her bidding, most of whom regret the meat thing in retrospect…”  
  
“Gaga is an earth human grub noise,” Karkat grumbled, scratching an ear. Hey, the longer Dave ranted, the longer Karkat didn’t suffer his sadistic Earth torture practices. He was cool with this. “I refuse to be beholden to its whims.”  
  
“Oh, shut up and dance, silly,” Terezi exclaimed, rapping on the desk with her cane. “Mr. Strider, the court demands to be entertained!”  
  
“You got it, TZ. One not-Gaga Earth pop song coming right up.” Dave adjusted his shades with one hand, while the other flew across the computer screen. He fixed Karkat with a smirk. “Think you can handle it, tough guy?”  
  
Karkat sneered and quirked his upraised claws in the gesture of ‘Earth human bring it.’ He could handle whatever Strider dished out.  
  
Dave smirked back as a thumping beat began to spill out of his speakers.  
  
It couldn’t be that hard. It was three minutes of basically channeling every douchebag thing Strider did with headphones on. There was no artistry to Strider douchebaggery. This would be easy as shit, and the last eleven failures were just a fluke.  
  
Three minutes and twenty-eight seconds later, Dave grinned at Karkat over the laptop.  
  
“That is literally the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. Like a baby giraffe trying to ice skate.”  
  
Karkat glowered. 

\----

“Best friend,” Gamzee said.  
  
Karkat wasn’t sure when Gamzee had chosen to manifest on the ceiling of his respiteblock, or how he was accomplishing this without any obvious mountain climbing gear, but Karkat got tired of questioning the behaviors of psychopathic dipshits every once in a while. He didn’t have to give a shit. He was under no contractual obligations to give a shit.  
  
“Get off the ceiling before you break your neck,” Karkat groaned upwards.  
  
Creeped out? No. Not after that one time he’d found his moirail in the ablution chamber not five fucking seconds after Karkat had toweled off. So Karkat had been naked and Gamzee had complimented him on his pants, and Karkat had just gone with closing the ablution curtain and brushing his teeth because fuck if he knew what was happening here.  
  
At present, Gamzee obediently spider-crawled down from the ceiling like polka-dotted horrorterror. Karkat shuffled over to help him down, and Gamzee immediately collapsed into his shoulder, smelling like freshly cut grass. Nothing grew on this stupid magic rock, but whatever. Karkat didn’t have the willpower left to question it.  
  
“Best friend,” Gamzee began again as Karkat dumped all his lanky limbs onto the horn pile. “There’re some mighty unusual tunes you’ve been listening to.”  
  
Karkat rolled his eyes and slouched back over to his husktop. He’d downloaded three of the songs Strider had promised were not of Gaga, and was paused in the middle of the one he hated the least, because at least it sounded like there was the possibility of violence. Somewhere. Deep down.  
  
(None of these songs were about violence and it was killing Karkat slowly.)  
  
“Strider,” he explained to Gamzee shortly. “You know that contest we had at breakfast the other day?”  
  
“Hehe, yeeaaah,” Gamzee said, drawing out the syllables. “Those were some mighty fine miracles to get my snack on to.” He smiled broadly. Gamzee then pointed out, rather kindly, “But best friend, you can’t slam for shit.”  
  
“Yeah, I am all too fucking aware of this,” Karkat grumbled. He switched the music back on, partly just to torture his moirail for being right. When he turned around, Gamzee was swinging his head to the beat. Karkat stood back, staring. Gamzee looked like a moron.  
  
But not a limbless moron chicken attempting to shamble through a minefield, so Karkat flopped into the pile next to him and demanded, “How are you doing that?”  
  
“What? Feeling the vibe?” Karkat had not the faintest fucking clue what that meant, so he nodded. “Shit, bro. You don’t gotta try or nothing. You just let yourself feel.” Gamzee beamed, cracking the paint around his cheeks.  
  
This raised an important question: had Karkat’s moirail been hatched stupid, or did he have to work at it?  
  
“Like this,” Gamzee hummed, and slung an arm around Karkat’s shoulders. Ugh. Gamzee was about as snuggly as a beached fish left on the sand for three days (he smelled nice, though). Karkat settled against his moirail’s chest with a groan and tolerated getting swayed from side to side like they were passengers on a spaceship with no stabilizers. “Feel it?” Gamzee asked against Karkat’s ear. Karkat shrugged a shoulder.  
  
“You’re humming. I feel that.” Gamzee hummed with pretty much his whole chest and it was kind of putting Karkat’s arm to sleep.  
  
“Yeah, that’s good,” Gamzee encouraged. Karkat glanced up. “Naw, not pinging on you, best friend. ‘S the honest truth. It’s good you hear the humming, cause that’s how you move. You gotta…” And he was staring upwards, possibly awaiting divine revelation. Karkat joined him in contemplation.  
  
 _Hey, God. Yes, I know. Strider is a squelching sewage sockpuppet, and we all hope he falls in something sticky and gross._  
  
 _What’s that, God? Dancing is stupid? Yeah, well, at least we’re not talking to mythological societal constructs because we’re so disjointed from any coherent reality._  
  
 _Also, fuck this game._  
  
“You gotta let it hum,” Gamzee spoke up after the pause. “You gotta let all of them air waves get right up on you and start humming around your skin with their secrets. And your skin, it’s gotta start humming through the rest of you, and when it gets to your muscles, that’s how you move.”  
  
“You hum,” Karkat said skeptically.  
  
Gamzee beamed down at him like this was exceptionally clever. “You motherfucking hum.”  
  
Karkat tried very hard to come up with a scathingly sarcastic response. One about what sopor did to people’s pans; something like that. Gamzee smiled the sarcasm right out of him. Total exsanguination. Karkat would up staring at his knees and blushing.  
  
“Alright, fine,” he grumbled, and elbowed his moirail off of him. The next song had started, and it was almost at the part with words. “It’s not like I don’t have plenty of time to continue making an ass of myself.” Without looking back, he added, “You’d better sit your fucking ass down and observe this bullshit spectacle.”  
  
Gamzee honked one of the horns. “I’m all eyes, bro.”

\----

One two-minute-and-thirty-second dancing extravaganza later, Gamzee was patting Karkat’s shoulder. “It wasn’t as bad as all that, best friend.”  
  
“Grrr.”  
  
“Alright,” Gamzee papped him again. “I’m sorry I laughed. That wasn’t too motherfucking nice. My bad.”  
  
Karkat bit him.

\----

“You’re graceful,” Karkat declared. His friend had just opened her respiteblock door. Kanaya’s eyebrows arched up and her skin fizzled out a startled burst of luminescence. Karkat had his hands on his hips and a face knitted into an aggressive glower. “Teach me how to be.”  
  
“Oh dear,” Kanaya said, running a hand through her hair. She smiled at Karkat a little bit. “Would this have anything to do with Dave’s proposition to you earlier this week…?”  
  
Karkat’s scowl deepened. “He’s saying I can’t have my hard copy of the human _Princess Bride_ back until I complete his stupid fucking humiliation ritual and he won’t let me finish it until I suck less.”  
  
“Karkat,” Kanaya said, in a tone that made Karkat’s heart sink to the toes of his shoes. “I value our friendship far too much to involve myself in this affair.”  
  
He let that sink in for a moment, reflecting on the situation, and what had gotten him here. Karkat ended up growling into his own fist, eyes squeezed shut. “Oh my god, he fucking recorded it, didn’t he.”  
  
Kanaya fidgeted. “I hope you know that this does not affect my personal regard for you as a teammate and strifemaster—“  
  
“Oh fuck all _kinds_ of duck,” Karkat cursed, and stomped away, equipping his sickles as he went. “STRIDER!!”

\----

“Not my fault you suck,” Dave said, hovering exactly six feet and three and a half inches over Karkat’s head. Read: just beyond Karkat’s jump range. Karkat had already scanned the entire room for literally anything that he could use to climb on, and now just had his hands dangling at his sides and a growl bubbling out of his throat.  
  
“Honestly, I don’t even think it’s really your fault,” Dave said, reclining. “I think it’s a troll thing. TZ can’t hold a beat for shit either, even if your awkward walrus thing is, like, waaaaay better YouTube fodder.”  
  
Karkat bared his teeth. “I already know there’s no such thing as YouTube. It’s a myth.”  
  
Dave shot him one of his pitying looks, like he was trying to convince Karkat that he was too feeble-minded to slog through Egbert’s never-ending parade of lies, and should buy into the bullshit. Karkat rolled his eyes at it. Dave was full of every kind of crap ever shat upon soil.  
  
“I want my movie,” the troll said.  
  
“I want my pound of flesh,” Dave responded with a grin. “Better get back to practicing, Vantas. Wouldn’t want all that hard work to go to waste.”  
  
There was a possibility that if Karkat leapt for Dave’s cape and caught it, he could slam Strider back to the ground and pummel him into unconditional surrender—  
  
No, nope, he’d never get his movie back that way. Karkat took a deep breath instead, and gulped down his growl. God, this was hard. “What if… What if I _admitted_ I sucked?”  
  
This was exactly the kind of humiliating bullshit Strider got off on, right? Oh yeah, there he went, leaning forward. “Go on,” Dave said slowly, one eyebrow visible just over his shades. “You have piqued my interest. A little.”  
  
Karkat licked his lips. “I could say that… I’m just fundamentally, irrevocably terrible. At all aspects of this particular topic.” Dave cocked his head at the word ‘terrible.’ Yeah, he liked that didn’t he, the dirty bitch? Karkat SO had him. “Maybe I’d say… that you’re better than me at it?”  
  
“Oh, I know I’m better than you at pretty much everything,” Dave scoffed. But he had his shades glued to Karkat and Karkat smelled victory. “But let me just humor you. What else?”  
  
Karkat smirked coyly upwards. “I don’t know. I might just, hm, say that you _always_ will be?”  
  
Dave whistled, shaking his head slowly. “Damn, Karkat. You’re playing hardball now.” Like there was ever any fucking doubt. Karkat snorted. “I’ll tell you what…”  
  
Karkat’s ears pricked up, swimming in visions of his precious DVD box in his hands, home safe at last.  
  
“You do that in front of everybody at dinner or something, and we’re square.”  
  
“Deal,” Karkat said quickly, before Dave could take it back. He publicly humiliated himself on a weekly basis, so what was one more drop in the proverbial Not Bucket?  
  
“One more thing,” Dave said before Karkat was quite through fist-pumping. “You’ve just gotta say that all your movies are shit.”  
  
Karkat froze. He looked up. Dave looked back, serene as a cloud in the void.  
  
“But.”  
  
Dave raised an eyebrow. Karkat blinked.  
  
“But. That’s.”  
  
“That’s the deal, Karkles,” said the god tier level STOMACH-CRAWLING _MOTHERFUCK_ OF A HOPPED-UP BULGE **SCAFFOLD.** “Take it or leave it.”  
  
Karkat thought of his copy of _Princess Bride._ He thought about what Wesley would do.  
  
With a roar, Karkat sprang for the motherfuck’s cape.

\----

You know what Terezi was? Literally the only person on this asteroid who did not suck massive donkey bulge.  
  
“I just thought it would be easier, cause we’re both awful,” Terezi announced, and her cape honest to god flared out behind her. Karkat stared, mouth agape, and felt like he should fall to his knees. The troll girl flicked him in the nose. “We’re united in wanting to make Dave eat his words anyway, so let’s do this!”  
  
See, this was why Terezi was the woman of Karkat’s dreams. Good-natured, dauntless, and wearing a dragonsuit. Karkat grabbed her by the hand and they threw themselves into his room, from which the ominous tones of _Please Don’t Stop the Music_ yet wafted.  
  
(Seriously, the shit was beginning to invade Karkat’s nightmares. The horrorterrors didn’t even have to try anymore, as long as they could manifest a boombox from Karkat’s subconscious, he’d be in the fetal position.)  
  
But forget the horrorterrors, forget even what was coming out of the speakers, Karkat was dancing next to the girl of his dreams. Okay, more like awkward shuffling. Karkat needed to stop clearing his throat. It was beginning to hurt.  
  
Terezi saved the day again—flashed her teeth at him and wiggled her fingers. “Aren’t you supposed to take my hands and spin me around the dance floor?” And now _that_ sounded like a plan. Karkat cleared his throat (dammit) and ignored the electric chill that went up his arms.  
  
And he spun that girl around the dance floor like you wouldn’t believe.  
  
Gone was the awkward shuffle. Banished forever from this sanctuary. They flailed. They head-banged. They crashed into each other several times and wound up a howling mess on the floor, and they kept right on holding hands. Not the whole time, but pretty consistently, just because it was nice. Terezi had awesome hands, which Karkat could say objectively at a friend, because he definitely wasn’t experiencing any world-slowing, room-spinning, _her laughter is all the music I need_ moments. Nope. Not at all. This was not a romantic montage in the slightest, whatever gave you that impression?  
  
So they danced until they could dance no more, and then Karkat’s jelly legs flopped him into the horn pile and Terezi sort of landed on his knees and let him tow her the rest of the way up. She was panting like crazy, grinning hugely at nothing at all, and just setting aside the incredibly romantic thing that might be happening in here, Karkat was…  
  
So incredibly fond of this troll.  
  
“Wow,” Terezi gasped. “We totally suck!” She rolled from side to side, giggling and tangling her legs in her cape.  
  
Karkat snorted, mouth turning up at the edges. “Fuck, we really, _really_ do.”  
  
She sobered for a moment, fixing Karkat with a serious stare. “Dave,” she said to him, and Karkat’s heart did that kind of belching nightmare thing it did whenever Terezi talked to him about Dave. But all she offered was, “He has to have like, cool kid buoyancy nodules in his joints or something.”  
  
Karkat considered this, before wheezing, “I am tentatively going to go with ‘yes.’”  
  
“That was kind of fun,” Terezi sighed as she slingshot a horn at Karkat’s ceiling. It bounced off with a squeal of despair. She wasn’t looking at Karkat anymore—apparently she was relaxed enough not to telegraph. The edges of Karkat’s mouth inched up a little higher.  
  
Not that dancing was enjoyable. Obviously. Karkat had been flinging himself across the floor all afternoon to the same damn chords, and it had emphatically not been fun once. There was no way to make this shit pleasant, unless it involved drugs. So he hummed noncommittally.  
  
She elbowed him. “Come on, Karkat.”  
  
“Oh fine, it was deliciously raspberry good times,” Karkat grumbled, sure he was indulging her until he actually said it. He paused. “…Oh.” Terezi smirked. After a moment of having complicated feelings, Karkat offered softly, “Thanks.”  
  
“I know, I know, you’d be helpless without me,” Terezi announced brightly, and bolted back upright. “Oh yeah! I thought of some advice that could help you, too!” As Karkat sat up, she cackled into her hands. “You just have to do the _exact opposite_ of whatever it is you _think_ you should do!”  
  
Oh look, there was Karkat’s scowl again! Engraving itself back upon his face like a champ. Karkat grimaced at the troll girl. “You just had to go and stomp all over the moment, didn’t you?”  
  
Terezi ignored him. “But wouldn’t that get kind of complicated after a while? If the defendant realizes that he must think the opposite of the thought in question, then the opposite thought does in fact become his thought and must therefore be purged as a great injustice upon the eyes of all and sundry—“  
  
And now she was talking to herself. Great.  
  
“…Terezi?”  
  
“—but then he would simply be returned to his original state of thought, which could be nothing but incorrect—“  
  
Nope, she was gone. Might as well perforate his self-esteem with a thousand tiny rage machetes. Aka, practice some more. Karkat groaned at his knees and stood up.

\----

“It has come to my attention that you are having difficulty in your latest round of one-upmanship with my ectobrother.”  
  
 _Good morning to you too, Lalonde._  
  
She slid her alchemized breakfast onto the table in front of where Karkat was working his way through something greasy. Karkat glanced up at her. “Are you here to laugh at me?”  
  
“I assure you, I don’t need to approach you specifically for conversation to accomplish such a thing.”  
  
Point. “Okay. You’re right—Strider is being an asshole. What do you want?”  
  
“To restore the natural order,” said Rose, with a flourish. “To see that tranquility and stability once again reign supreme in this interspecies house of cards we have built.” That was a lot of words. Karkat snorted. “To see Dave get his, because he sat on my knitting needle and broke it.”  
  
 _Strider, you glorious douchefuck._ Karkat actually broke eye contact with his food. Rose matched his gaze from beneath long lashes. “What have you got for me, Lalonde?”  
  
The Seer smiled. “Karkat, I’m told you have some fighting prowess. Is that true?” Karkat just squinted at her.  
  
“To be clear,” Karkat said, “I could take down every person in this room and still have plenty of time to mop up the odious puddles of blood.” Rose’s dark lips curved into a wicked smile.  
  
“Then allow me to, as they say, blow your alien mind.”

\----

As the familiar set of notes burst through the air, Karkat closed his eyes and held out his hands.  
  
He felt exceptionally stupi—not constructive, shut the fuck up.  
  
 _Visualize your sickles, in hand._ Right. He was supposed to picture himself in battle. _No movement is wasted, and you put your whole body into it when you react. Fast. You can be fast, right?_  
  
 _Do you want a demonstration, Lalonde?_  
  
 _There’s no need to be confrontational, Karkat. This is for your benefit._  
  
Karkat sucked in another breath, squeezing his eyes shut tighter.  
  
 _Hit exactly when and where you want to, right in the center of the beat—right in your enemy. Understand?_  
  
 _Right in_ Dave Strider.  
  
He heard a ghost of Rose’s surprised laughter. Karkat’s fingers flexed and caught on nothing. The air hummed.  
  
Karkat made the first move.

\----

_You gotta let it hum._ Yeah, okay, but if Karkat had the volume up any louder, he was pretty sure his husktop would just combust. He had his fingers flattened to the device, feeling for the same hum he’d heard in Gamzee’s chest. There, that. His fingers vibrated in time. That was… probably the beat, or whatever the fuck it was that people kept talking about.  
  
Karkat pulled his hand back. Felt the air.  
  
Okay.  
  
 _It’s gotta start humming through the rest of you, and when it gets to your muscles, that’s how you move._  
  
Karkat’s muscles coiled tight and he threw himself after that vibration.  
  
And for the first fucking time, he caught himself without falling.

\----

_Are you having fun?_  
  
Karkat really doubted it.  
  
 _Try harder, dummy!_

\----

Just. Dance.  
  
God help him, Karkat _was._

\----

CG: STRIDER  
  
CG: I WANT A REMATCH  
  
CG: YOU, ME, YOUR SICK BEATS. THREE SONGS.  
  
CG: BRING MY FUCKING DVD  
  
TG: I can already tell this is going to make my week.  
  
CG: I AM GOING TO SCHOOL YOU SO HARD  
  
CG: THEY WILL DEDICATE ENTIRE ACADEMIES IN YOUR HONOR  
  
CG: WHERE STRIDER SPAWN GO TO TAKE THEIR GRACE AND RHYTHM COURSES LIKE GOOD LITTLE GRUBS  
  
TG: What, in tutus?  
  
TG: Are you comparing me to a ballerina, dude?  
  
CG: I WANT MY DVD, DAMMIT.

Carcinogeneticist (CG) ceased pestering TurntechGodhead (TG).

\----

The natural cosmos being what it was, and Dave Strider in fact being himself, there was no other outcome than this. He’d successfully crammed every living inhabitant of this meteor, from Gamzee (smiling vacantly at the ceiling and eating what Karkat really hoped were not sofa springs), to the Mayor, (surrounded by the small but growing suburban metropolis of Bottle Village). Terezi had grubcorn. Rose appeared to be wearing ironic shades. Dave stood before a speaker system the size of a small truck, arms crossed, head cocked, smirk stonily in place.  
  
“Sup, Vantas?” He called as Karkat walked in. Karkat took one look around the room and threw down the duffel bag in his arms. It clattered against the floor and Dave snickered. “What’s in there, tap shoes?”  
  
“Never you fucking mind, you sanctimonious piece of shit,” Karkat snarled. “I see you brought company. Where was that in our agreement?!”  
  
“You’ve never seemed afraid of attention before,” Dave retorted. Karkat gnashed his teeth.  
  
“Can you two stop hateflirting and get on with the good stuff?” Terezi snickered over her snack. “You’ll make a girl all jealous.” She looked delighted. She looked delighted and Karkat broke out in a cold sweat. He was not afraid of having six people all staring at him while Strider did ironic little eye-rolling, hand-waving bullshit, not at all, or at least he was going to pretend very hard. So he jerked his head at the sound system wordlessly. Dave nodded back and went to turn it on.  
  
Karkat took a deep breath and rallied himself. _Okay, so this is just like being in your respiteblock. Ignore everyone. Just wipe them from the fucking planet and get ready to—_  
  
He nearly got obliterated by the shriek of sound that came from Strider’s stupid speakers. Instead of shifting forward, Karkat’s foot slipped out from under him and Karkat just about face-planted in front of them all. He could see Dave laughing through his fingers.  
  
“ _Evacuate the Dance Floor?_ ” He could hear Rose shouting dryly. “Really, Dave?”  
  
“He evacuates it with how horrible he is.”  
  
“Turn it the fuck down!” Karkat protested, red-faced. “That scared the shit out of me!”  
  
“You know, I don’t think I will,” Dave bellowed over the music. Rose had her fingers in her ears and her nose wrinkled—Gamzee was staring at his springs in deep dismay, like they were the true culprits of sonic assault here—and Karkat suddenly understood why Kanaya was wearing earmuffs. “After all the times I tried to politely remind you that there was such a thing as an inside voice—“  
  
Karkat screamed back, “Alright, you asswipe, fine! I’ll dance to this shit, I’ll play your fucking game, literally anything to stop you from talking. Stitch your windhole shut and start it over!” Dave grinned and moved to his computer. Wincing, Karkat managed to pry his claws away from his ears. He braced himself, hands curling into fists, fighting the urge to start sinking towards the floor.  
  
Words hit the air, and Karkat took off.  
  
The beat throbbed loud as gunshots, which helped put it in perspective. Karkat outlined exactly how he intended to hand its ass to it. Step by fucking step, a rant of skin. The music didn’t have to be about violence to be good. Karkat just had to be the violence. Thrills shuddered up his spine and he made himself like a whip, through the air, across the floor, slinging the length of his body from left to right and back.  
  
You _bet_ his fucking arms _moved_ , grabbing handfuls of vibration from the air and making it do his bidding. It rocked through him. Arched his spine, snapped his hips, flung his head back like Karkat did not give a fuck. And he did not.  
  
Some kind of crescendo crept up between swells of vocals and Karkat leapt, left the fucking ground and twisted midair. The shock of bass the base drum boomed in time with his feet crashing down. Perfect--critical hit. Karkat rolled out just like he’d gotten pasted to the wall by some douchebag’s fist, bared his teeth, committed dance murder, and if everybody in this room was not taking a fucking step back off the dance floor in shock, _his name was not Karkat Vantas._  
  
The people in the room had blurred out behind the grind of his muscles. Behind sound being translated to pure electricity, building higher every time he spun to the right note. The information from his eyes was getting blacked out. Nothing mattered but the fight. Goofily, it was fun. Karkat stomped his feet like he’d take chunks out of this asteroid, cut swathes through the vocals, gasped for breath with sweat slick down the back of his neck and never thought about slowing down because THIS WAS NOT FUCKING OVER.  
  
And then it was.  
  
And Karkat kind of forgot why he stopped and just paused in confusion before he realized nothing was playing anymore. He’d just stampeded his way through all three songs without Strider interfering and now the room was deafeningly silent.  
  
Uh. Okay.  
  
 _Everyone,_ Karkat was reminded, _is gluing their oculars to me._ His skin prickled, and suddenly flinging himself broad to meet sound patterns was the last fucking thing he wanted to do. Reflexively, he closed inward, huddling into his sweater and trying not to pant loudly. His eyes went around the room, to Dave last of all. Dave looked like he was about to fall out of the air. Karkat didn’t see the DVD in his hands.  
  
His heart sank.  
  
A chunk of grubcorn fell out of Terezi’s mouth. “Oh my god,” she said. Karkat jumped at her voice (was she about to be sick?) and looked over at her. She was staring at him intensely, with her claws gouging a chunk out of the bowl. Why was she blushing? He couldn’t have been that bad.  
  
From his corner, Gamzee began to clap. Which could mean anything. It was Gamzee. He could be murdering imaginary bees, for all Karkat knew. Kanaya had a hand over her heart and a look on her face like Karkat was a very complex set of measurements. Rose didn’t have any expression at all, and the Mayor had knocked over a great deal of Bottle Village in the process of standing up and… not doing anything. Great.  
  
Karkat turned to glare at Dave. “That’s just wonderful, Strider, your POS speaker system gave them all thinkpan damage. I hope you are proud of yourself. I hope your lusus weeps tears of joy every day for the privilege of contributing to your existence.  
  
“Dude,” Dave said, and then, “How the fuck did you learn to do _that?_ ”  
  
Karkat grimaced. “Insulting you is as easy as—“  
  
“Oh my god!” Terezi squealed. “Karkat Vantas is _hot!_ ” And while Karkat was reeling from that, the Mayor suddenly bounded across the room and wrapped his arms around Karkat’s waist, hugging him with the tight enthusiasm of a screaming fan that bounded past the bouncers at a rock show. He was the Mayor, so it was cool. Everyone else was giving Karkat looks like they planned to string him up and buy him tights and force him to dance forever. Karkat stumbled a step back.  
  
“Karkat, you’re completely the dancing god!”  
  
“This is so wrong,” Dave said, and Karkat realized, distressed, that Dave was blushing too. “Man, I don’t even… _How_ did that just happen? You, like…” He gestured. Karkat didn’t know what that gesture meant. HE DIDN’T KNOW, OKAY?! Dave turned away, fiddling with his shades. “Ngh.”  
  
Even Kanaya, reliably above-it-all Kanaya was looking like she was planning to forcibly strip Karkat and put him in a leotard, or possibly not put him in anything at all, and the Mayor was bouncing a little bit, and had Gamzee just licked his lips? Nope, nope, nope, time to go.  
  
“DVD,” Karkat demanded squeakily of Dave. The human opened his mouth. No sound came out. He closed it again. Handed the box to Karkat without meeting his eyes.  
  
“Vantas. I did need not know you could move like that. I had no idea. I was _happy_ having no idea. And now my world doesn’t make sense.”  
  
“Karkat Vantas is swaggerific!” Terezi proclaimed, apparently responding to this spectacle with the burning desire to make Karkat cut himself.  
  
“Yeah, fuck, he is,” said Dave, and Karkat couldn’t tell if that was supposed to be ironic or not. He was concerned that he wouldn’t like the answer. So he gently dislodged the Mayor and then sped from the room as fast as his legs would carry him. Only when safely walled away in his respiteblock did Karkat let himself breathe a sigh of relief.  
  
 _Wesley. Buttercup. You’re home now, you’re safe. It’s okay._  
  
For his suffering, Karkat deserved to marathon his feelings. He wasn’t leaving his respiteblock for hours, if at all. Not until true love had soothed the pain of his soul.  
  
When he did actually leave the room, he discovered that someone had left the duffel back of metal smuppet Suck It, Strider trophies that he’d painstakingly alchemized in front of his door. There was a note on top.  
  
 _I have exactly 348 songs on my computer._  
  
Karkat crumpled the note and grumbled under his breath and felt really pretty great about himself. He should probably get on marathoning his victory spoils for the third time.  
  
He was midway through the hill scene when he turned and found his moirail sprawled next to him. Karkat immediately punched Gamzee in the shoulder, which got him a confused look.  
  
“It does not fucking hum, dipshit,” Karkat grumbled. “It does the… the pulse thing.” He flicked his fingers by way of explanation. Stupid Gamzee, getting his vibrations all wrong.  
  
Gamzee grinned at him, and Karkat observed that the tips of his ears were turning purple. “Guess I gotta concede that to the motherfucking expert, don’t I?” He whistled and didn’t say anything else, so Karkat unpaused his movie. They watched in silence for a little while, and then Gamzee dropped his bony head on Karkat’s equally bony shoulder and murmured, “Real fucking proud of you, best friend. You dropped a miracle on everybody what no one saw coming. Like drink for the eyes, seeing music up and live like that.”  
  
Karkat rested his chin on the mound of troll fluff. “Watch the movie, Gamzee.” _Before my face gets any hotter._  
  
“Of course, now everybody with the quadrant open for it is gonna be thinking thoughts, brother…”  
  
“And I will end them,” Karkat said gently. “With my sickle.”

\----

Lesson #1,699 of the Great Boredom Gurus of This Fucking Rock: when literally everyone you know is begging you to teach them shit and/or have you dance for them so they can jerk their bulge to it or something equally horrifying, you will eventually give up and say yes because your sanity is more important than how epically horrifying it was for Strider to announce, “Wow, Vantas, you really _do_ have an ass under all that shit you wear.”  
  
Prick.  
  
Karkat made them all swear that they wouldn’t record this shit and that it would stay and die on the meteor. Harley and Egbert never needed to know about his sudden (and obviously destined to be brief) love affair with dancing.  
  
…So far, he thought he’d deleted most of the recordings.

\----

Lesson #1,700 of the Great Boredom Gurus of This Fucking Rock: anything you’ve done, your ancestor has also done, probably at least twice, because they’ve been dicking around for far longer than you like to contemplate. The Beforans started some kind of bragging war with Karkat’s friends, and Terezi and Kanaya both roaring that Karkat could take Kankri any day of the week (while Gamzee got some kind of disturbing head-nod from Cronus that went totally over his head).  
  
Karkat, of course, watched firmly from the sidelines, and refused to touch the spectacle with a ten-foot pole.  
  
When they actually convinced Kankri to dance, Karkat spent the next few minutes with his jaw in his lap and his heart in his throat. His ancestor could fucking _move._  
  
And Kankri was… gorgeous. Kankri was the speed of light. Kankri did not appear to have bones—maybe he was made of feathers, or gently blooming flower petals or sunlight hitting river water, Karkat did not know. It was destructive and Karkat couldn’t stop blushing. By the time the song ended, there were incredibly uncomfortable thoughts about his ancestor in his head and some choking when Kankri smirked at him.  
  
It was his Punch-Me smirk. Karkat knew it well. He did not understand the newfound desire to punch Kankri with his mouth and he desperately hoped it was temporary.  
  
And then Dave and Rose were there, hauling him up from his very nice patch of dream bubble dirt and pushing him into the center of the room while assuring him (with what appeared to be sincerity!) that he had this in the bag.  
  
Karkat proceeded to feel like the most awkward set of left heels to ever clomp around to oddly tinny music and the smell of desperation.  
  
And by the end, everyone was staring and clapping and shouting and Karkat had never seen Kanaya lose her temper the way she did when they were trying to judge who had done better because “CLEARLY you were sleeping during THE ARTISTRY of my friend’s performance and may want to get YOUR EYES CHECKED.”

\----

Lesson #1,701 of the Great Boredom Gurus of This Fucking Rock: when almost all the people you know are screaming about the comparative merits of your hips swaying versus your ancestors jazz hands, few things in the world are quite so welcome as a distraction. Literally any distraction.  
  
Like your ancestor sidling closer with red-stained cheeks and offering, “That was very… Very good, Karkat. I was unaware you had such an intense interest in the performance arts.”  
  
This was probably the shortest thing Kankri had ever said to Karkat. It was also the least immediately traumatic. When Karkat looked over at him, his ancestor was giving him a look that was equal parts admiration, excitement, and _steel._  
  
“What do you know about break dancing?” Asked Kankri, and Karkat’s life pretty much flashed before his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Spawned by the Homesmut Kink meme challenge about writing a fic to random song choices. I got Evacuate the Dance Floor.
> 
> And this is the result. Your suffering
> 
> I would like to proudly state here for the record that I do not regret any of this, but also that I wrote it really late at night, and no editing in my power can erase that particular brand of suck. Judge me not!


End file.
